LEONHIRTH: Moderate views part of state's heritage

Blanton, who died in 1996, had an undistinguished career in the U.S. House of Representatives and a scandalous term as Tennessee governor in the 1970s.

Actually, he did not serve a full term in the governor's chair because the speakers of the state House and state Senate decided to oust him a few days early since they were concerned that Blanton might sell a few more pardons.

The Blanton administration was under investigation for the sale of pardons and liquor licenses among other larcenies. Blanton eventually went to federal prison after his conviction for various crimes.

One beneficiary of Blanton's corruption was Lamar Alexander, the newly elected governor who was able to take the oath of office a few days early in 1979.

Even though Senate Speaker John Wilder and House Speaker Ned McWherter were Democrats, they preferred Republican Alexander to Democrat Blanton.

Another beneficiary of Blanton's shenanigans was Fred Thompson, an attorney who first gained national attention during the Watergate hearings and who launched his acting career with a role in a movie about the sale of pardons and the woman who tried to stop it.

Thompson, the woman's real-life attorney, portrayed himself in the movie version of her story, and movie and television roles followed.

Republican Thompson, of course, went on to serve in the U.S. Senate and on "Law and Order." As things came full circle, Thompson's successor in the U.S. Senate was Alexander, who is seeking his third term in 2014.

Along with his two terms as governor and two terms in the Senate, Alexander has been president of the University of Tennessee and secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. He also made a couple of unsuccessful runs for president.

Alexander has been in the tradition of the moderation of such Republican senators as Howard Baker and Bill Frist, who served in leadership roles in the Senate and in the White House, in the case of Baker.

Alexander also had a party leadership post in the Senate but resigned in 2012 to help foster consensus in the Senate. That may have been enough to make him the bane of the Tea Party ilk.

The rants Saturday about Alexander's abandonment of the U.S. Constitution were rather shrill.

Obviously, the protesters who gathered outside an Alexander campaign event are opposed to the senator's votes and want to find a candidate to oppose his re-election bid.

That is all their right to do, but the senior senator is no subversive who has undermined the Constitution or poses any particular threat to the Constitution.

Perhaps such hyperbole is just a means to gain attention, like this column, but if the protesters really believe this, then they need to enroll in some civics classes that Alexander probably helped to develop at UT or through the Department of Education.

In 1979, Alexander was something of a breath of fresh air after several years of gubernatorial malfeasance and embarrassment, and to skew Barry Goldwater's famous pronouncement: "Moderation in the defense of liberty is no vice."

Castigate his politics, perhaps, but not his patriotism.

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LEONHIRTH: Moderate views part of state's heritage

The Tea Party never met Ray Blanton.

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